Friday, October 9, 2015

From the NYTimes.

In light of the bill permitting guns on our state’s college and university campuses, which is likely to be approved by the state House of Representatives in the coming days, I have a matter of practical concern that I hope you can help with: When may I shoot a student?

15 comments:

I don't want to shoot my students, and I don't want them to shoot me (or each other, or cafeteria workers who have run out of mac and cheese, or anybody else). Admittedly I'm not an expert in these matters, but it seems to me that the best way to accomplish that end is to have fewer, not more, weapons on campus. I'm glad to see that the author (and the author's local police chief) agree(s), but I'm not confident that such sanity will prevail.

P.S. I heard a group of students in one of my classes (who had gotten somewhat off-track in their group work; we're in the middle of midterms/coming up on fall break, and the class falls in the middle of what really should be lunch time, and off-trackedness was running rampant) joking about whether or not they felt safe/threatened. I didn't catch most of the conversation, and there was nothing in the tone to suggest that it rose to the level of anything that required intervention, but there does seem to be some nervousness afoot. Seems like a good moment for fall break.

This is exactly my experience this week. Any unease among young people makes me more uneasy than usual. What is the danger we face as professors in these often wide open public spaces with the illusion of safety?

Our campus is wide open to town, and occasionally I see straggler on campus who don't "look" like students. I never used to think about this in the old days, and now I do. Our campus is easily accessed from several roads that lead out into the boonies. Individual buildings are open well past normal operating hours. There are virtually no locks on many older buildings' interior doors. Many classrooms only have one point of egress.

It's a nightmare that I have only recently started thinking about. We had a 30 minute video training about 'active shooters" a couple of years ago. It didn't prepare me for the worst.

My campus borders a river that is often populated with travelers and homeless. Across from campus is terrific church where my wife went as a child that runs one of the largest haflway house intake facilities in the state. In another direction is a mammoth food services factory. Much of the working population in this area is short on transportation, so even on fairly busy roads you see workers walking, and the campus is a nice, pleasant path that leads to a grocery store and some convenience markets and the credit union for 2 factories in addition to the food services.

None of this means that a 21 year old Guatamelan kid who works 8 hour shifts nearby is going to kill a bunch of us; I'm just saying that I used to have the illusion that a college campus was a bit of a sanctuary. Naive, perhaps.

That's not the case here. Of course it's more likely - relatively - that some disgruntled student or faculty member would be an active shooter. But with the recent public shootings in movie theaters and malls, it adds to my uneasiness. Your mileage my vary.

That's true for students, too. In fact, it's probably more true, since completed suicides are, in a substantial number of cases, and especially, as I understand it, when guns are involved, partly a result of being able to act too quickly, and too efficiently, on an impulse that, given time, might well pass, or at least be infinitely postponable (a good many people who survive depression seem to do it in the same way that many alcoholics stay sober: one day at a time). We've all read (about) the research suggesting that impulse control is underdeveloped in young adults. Add the disinhibiting effects of alcohol et al., and sprinkling guns into the mix seems like a recipe for (greater) trouble on campus.

If we're going to arm a currently-unarmed group on campus (and, for all the reasons named above, I'm not in favor of that), I'd argue for (psychologically-stable, which is the majority) recent combat veterans, and/or current members of the reserves. Then again, that group seems to function pretty well in emergency situations without weapons (witness this summer's incident on the train in Europe -- though one of that group may have acquitted himself somewhat less honorably in a recent late-night encounter -- and, by some reports I read, Umpqua).

Here's another, thoughtful and nicely argued (at least to my mind) piece on the same subject from an Eastern Kentucky University Professor (not teaching this week because their campus shut down in face of a fairly specific threat). It also counts as one of the few things that has made me want to (re?*) read Hobbes' Leviathan (which I know I really should do, but somehow never get around to doing).

*I think there was an excerpt in our Norton Anthology of English Literature, and we read at least a bit, and heard a related lecture, in the English-Lit survey sophomore year.

We'd have to phrase it in terms of negative consequences to the students, such as,

If you email me six times in 24 hours without my express request to do so, by the Stapler of Frod I will gash my thorax before you with my own sharpened fingernail to spill my entrails on your Jimmy Choos as the pulsating geyser of my collapse bespatters the balance of your costume. Please note: in strict accordance with Registrar policy, final grades may be entered only by the instructor of record. No exceptions will be granted, including but not limited to disability or death of instructor. In the event that grades are not entered within one (1) week of the end of the term, all unentered grades will revert to a failure and the GPA calculated accordingly.

What Was This?

College Misery was a dysfunctional group blog where professors got the chance to release some of the frustration that built up while tending to student snowflakes, helicopter parents, money mad Deans, envious colleagues, and churlish chairpeople.

Our parent site, Rate Your Students, started in 2005, and we continued that mission beginning in 2010. Ben at Academic Water Torture and Kimmie at The Apoplectic Mizery Maker both ran support blogs during periods when this blog had died.